Gravity
by enelle1989
Summary: Because this whole "love" thing is about staying within each other's reach. * Nate & Elena, somewhere between UC3 and UC4.


**Disclaimer** : I don't own anything of Uncharted, everything belongs to Naughty Dog, Sony and other respective owners.

I am not an English-speaker, so if there are mistakes, forgive me, I'm doing my best to avoid them.

When it comes to big fights, it's usually easy to pick the guilty one. Then it's much easier to apologize, but much harder to forgive. When it comes to those everyday fights, the guilt is usually on both sides. Then it's much harder to apologize, but easier to forgive. And when these everyday fights finally end, nobody remembers why they actually started; because they're mostly driven by pride, not by a sense of harm.

* * *

Elena _pretends_ she's reading a book. She's waiting. It would be a crucial mistake to underestimate her opponent. She's ready to react at every change of situation - and that change finally comes.

Nathan leaves the bathroom after occupying it for over half an hour and transforming it into a Finnish sauna. She sighs with annoyance; he has an awful habit of leaving the bathroom in a complete mess, with water splashed all over the piles, foam on the walls of the shower, with steamy mirrors and towels on the floor. She lifts her eyes off the book, watching him as he walks through the room unceremoniously half-naked, drying his back with a towel. He doesn't look in her direction, but she's certain that he's watching her too.

"Just to let you know - you're not the only one in this household to use this place," she informs him icily as she walks quickly towards the bathroom. From the corner of her eye she sees him searching his drawers while drying the back of his neck with a towel.

"I don't remember locking the door. Since when you're ashamed to undress in front of me?"

"Since today," she spits out and bangs the door behind her. A second later she understands the seriousness of the situation in the bathroom. Feeling her socks getting wet because of pools of water on the floor, Elena rushes to the window vent to let fresh air into the room. Then, as the steam starts to vanish from the surface of her mirror, she slumps against the washbasin and sighs loudly, looking at her reflection.

Nathan pissed her off. God, she's fucked up like hell because of him. And she's not going to let him get away with it so easily. "Hell no. Not this time," she announces aloud to herself, opening a tube with a toothpaste.

They fight like any average marriage. Like any average pair of individualities, that declared on oath to spend the rest of their lives together under the same roof, pass together their free time, do the shopping, use common rooms, pay bills for the common house, use a joint bank account and above all: accept each other's everyday quirks and bad habits.

 _It's normal_ , she assures herself, standing under the stream of warm water. She's certain of it. All bad moments in their relationship commenced with the increasing lack of contact, lack of communication… lack of fights, too. They were just drifting away from each other, further and further away, until it was too late; until none of them had enough will to reach out the other one. They simply dropped out of their reach, out of their orbits. People, who are in love, argue with each other, because they _care_. If you don't care about somebody, they just can't get you upset. Everything's fine, unless the animosities aren't too frequent and finish soon.

The truth is, that neither Nate or Elena can't express grudge to each other for too long. Even now Elena feels already tired of this situation. Nevertheless, her pride won't allow her to put an end to it first. She wants Nathan to feel at least a little bit sorry for words he told her earlier today. Words that stabbed her. But she's well aware of the fact, that during that full of mutual reproaches clash with her husband she herself also said things that she now regrets. They knew each other so well; each of them knew where to attack to make it hurt the most.

"Shit," Elena grounds out, when she gets out of the shower. Her nightwear. She didn't leave a new pair of nightwear in the bathroom this morning... She doesn't want Nate to get the wrong idea - he can think she's got over it, but she hasn't. Elena takes one last clean towel and wraps it tightly around her chest, trying to cover as much of her body as possible.

When she enters the room, Nathan is already in bed, with a remote control in his hand, staring at the TV screen. That's an unusual view - he'd normally read a book. Maybe problems with concentration affect him too.

Elena passes over the piles of clothes sprawled on the floor and throws her own on the puff next to the wardrobe. Nathan doesn't even look at her, busy switching between channels (or pretending very well to be busy doing it). That actually upsets her even more. She stands at her side of the bed with her back to him and slides into her nightwear in a few quick moves, without exposing too much. When she's done, she throws a casual glance at Nathan, and she may swear, that he just fled his eyes before her.

Second later Nathan switches off the TV and angrily tosses the remote somewhere on the floor next to their bed.

"Nothing!" he speaks loudly in space as if he has some other audience in the room to listen to him. "Absolutely nothing to watch. Why the hell we're paying for this?" Perhaps he speaks a little bit too loud, than necessary.

Elena remains silent, sitting on the edge of the bed and combing her hair. She can feel his eyes burning down holes in her back. His words, initially loud and fierce, soon sink into the silence, which grows between them with every passing second. That silence becomes brutally unnatural and Elena can almost hear the accelerated beat of her heart, echoing in her ears.

When Elena gets onto the bed, she immediately discovers that her part of the comforter is much smaller than it is normally.

"Give it back," she orders quietly, pulling the fabric strongly in her direction, covering herself up. The night is rather cold, and Elena accustoms to the idea, that tonight she'll have to warm herself up on her own. She doesn't like the idea at all. Nathan doesn't even protest.

"Well…" he sighs tentatively, reaching out to the light switch of his bedside lamp, "Goodnight?"

"Yup, bye," Elena answers shortly, as she rolls on her side with her back to Nathan and presses her face to the pillow. She hears Nathan making silent, nearly inaudible sigh, as he switches off the light. He _apparently_ has enough of this fight as much as she does.

She squirms to get an appropriate position on her side of the bed, and hears Nathan doing the same thing on his side. When he finally stops moving, Elena understands that he clearly decided to play hard and to extend the impasse between them until dawn.

Instantly, the sorrow she kept all day inside of her, begins to get out of her control. She recalls his words, things he yelled in anger some hours ago and herself yelling even louder. She recalls the feeling of her chest getting flooded by a wave of heat when she wanted to slap him across his smart-ass, insolent face. She can't believe he actually said it all. Suddenly, her eyes start burning and her vision becomes blurry. She squeezes her eyes shut and makes a deep and trembling breath to cover a cry that craves at the back of her throat.

Then the mattress budges under Nate, as he scoots closer to her.

Elena freezes. An unexpected but nice shiver runs down her spine as she feels his breath on the bare skin of her back. He doesn't have to touch her in order to make her body react to his closeness. And that closeness is vibrant; it's the closest they got to each other since the beginning of the fight. The comforter rustles once again when Nate lifts his hand and flicks her loose hair back, exposing her neck. Second later he gently strokes her delicate skin with the taps of his fingers, causing her goose bumps.

"That tickles," she informs him, inefficiently trying to hide every trace of a tremble in her voice. Nate's hand freezes for a second in the air, then falls on her shoulder and slides down to her forearm. She doesn't repulse him.

"You're still mad?" she hears him asking quietly.

 _Genius. I married a flesh-and-blood genius_ , Elena thinks to herself, rolling her eyes.

"Try to guess," she suggests, her voice now calm and confident, "you have a 50 percent chance of picking the right answer."

She hears Nathan making a sigh, but he doesn't say anything. He caresses the skin on her forearm, idly drawing little circles with his thumb, and props his forehead on the back of her head, perhaps processing the exceeding amount of data in his mind. The expectant silence grows between them and Elena starts feeling a sense of guilt, as she's the one still turned with her back to him.

"To be honest…" she hears him swallowing loudly, "I think I have reasons to be mad.. _._ "

Elena blinks. "That makes two of us, because I think I've got my reasons too."

Another sigh. More exasperated then before.

"Jesus, 'lena… Can we just stop it already, please?"

Just like that. Without any sense of guilt and remorse. Elena grits her teeth and, not without any struggle, pulls her arm from the light grip of his hand.

"I gotta get some sleep," she murmurs, covering up, "you should do the same."

Here comes the silence again, but now the tension rises even higher. Elena feels like if her skin is covered with needles, and Nate will get stung if he'll touch her. Maybe he's got the same feeling, because he gets his hands off her and rolls over on his back. Then he starts squirming; for the next several minutes he's nervously switching positions, from his back to his side, making too much noise than normally. Eventually he pulls all the comforter from his wife.

"Nate," Elena says in a warning and rather unpleasant tone, as chilly wind from the open window brushes her skin. When Nate doesn't react, she sits up and pulls the fabric to her side, but Nate already covers himself up with comforter, leaving nothing for her.

"Hey!" she squeals with reproach, and maybe with a bit of surprise, but Nate just grins and rests his outstretched arm on the pillows next to her.

"C'mere," he invites her, a triumphant and confident grin still lingering on his face. "I rule the comforter tonight and this is my one-time offer."

Elena rolls her eyes and sighs heavily. In place of anger slowly comes resignation, but her pride won't allow her agree on his "offer" (or rather: blackmail). She turns away and reaches for the blanket lying on the floor.

"Get stuffed," she snaps at him, then curls up on her side of a bed under the thin blanket, pulling her legs up towards her chest. She immediately regrets that decision and trembles slightly, as the wind once again blows through the window and reaches their bed.

Nate makes another annoyed sigh, then shoots his arms up in the air in a gesture of surrender.

"Fine!" he almost yells, "It's my fault, okay?! I'm sorry! S-O-R-R-Y! Just stop being mad at me already!"

Elena blinks, then looks over her shoulder at Nate.

"You're serious?"

He nods his head in reply. His arms are still open, waiting for her to get into his embrace. "C'mere. Please," he begs.

Elena looks into his eyes, that are now full of surrender and regret. She's got enough of this fight too - it lasted terribly long already and any of them can drag it on any longer. So she slowly rolls over and shifts closer, placing her cheek on his collarbone. The room echoes with a sigh of relief, as Nathan wraps his arms around her, rolling them both to the side and quickly covering Elena up with the comforter.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs against her skin, pressing a kiss on her temple.

"Me too," she whispers softly. She breaths in his scent and presses her already frozen body to his, to get herself warmed up. "I can't be angry with you any longer."

She can feel him smiling against her skin. "Somehow I'm not surprised," he comments teasingly.

Elena looks up at him, then snorts with laughter and pounds with her fist against his back. "You jerk, you realize what you said back then? This time you-"

That sentence remains unfinished, as Nate hushes her with a kiss; it's eager and passionate, as if he hasn't kissed her for ages. As if he's been unable to breath for too long and she's the breath of air he needed so much in order to live. It makes her heart melt and she realizes pretty quick that her further grumping is completely pointless. So she wraps her arms around his neck and lets his hands slide down her sides and hug her tighter to him.

When they break the kiss, Nate looks down at her and smiles tentatively.

"Are we even yet?"

Elena smirks and gives him a gentle poke on a nose.

"For now, cowboy."

THE END

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